GENESEO,
N.Y.—An expert on Walt Whitman will deliver the third annual Walter
Harding Lecture at the State University of New York at Geneseo on Sept. 21.

Ed Folsom, the Roy J. Carver Professor at The University of
Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, will deliver his talk, titled "Walt Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Grass: Think Again." The talk is free and open to the public and will
be held at 4 p.m. in Room 204 in Newton Hall.

Folsom, who taught at SUNY Geneseo from 1975-76, also serves
as co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, an online electronic research and
teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman's vast work, for the first time,
easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students and general readers.

Folsom received his bachelor's degree in English from Ohio
Wesleyan University and his master's and Ph.D. from the University of
Rochester. He taught at Lancaster (Ohio) High School and the Eastman School of
Music before serving as a visiting assistant professor at Geneseo. He went to
The University of Iowa in 1976, and in 1996 served as a Fulbright Professor at
the University of Dortmund in Germany.

Folsom has received numerous awards and honors throughout
his prestigious career. He has served as editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly
Review since 1983 and directed "Walt Whitman: The Centennial Project." He is
the editor and author of several books on Whitman. In 2005, Folsom co-authored,
along with his fellow project co-director Kenneth M. Price, the book "Re-Scripting
Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work." Folsom also is the editor
of Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays (1994), co-editor of Walt Whitman: The
Measure of His Song (1981, revised 1997), co-editor of Walt Whitman and the
World (1996), and author of Walt Whitman's Native Representations (1994).

The talk will bring Folsom back to Geneseo to discuss one of
the most important writers in American history, said Richard Finkelstein,
professor and chair of the English department.

"He is sort of seen as the founder, as somebody who created
the distinctive American poetic voice. Whitman is to American poetry what
Thoreau is to American prose."

SUNY Geneseo launched the annual Harding lecture in 2004 in
honor of the late Walter Harding, an internationally famous faculty member who was
the world's leading scholar on 19th-century author Henry David Thoreau.

Harding, a distinguished professor emeritus of English at
SUNY Geneseo, died in 1996 at the age of 78. He joined the faculty at Geneseo
in 1956 after teaching at the University of Virginia, Rutgers University and
the University of North Carolina. He served as chair of SUNY Geneseo's English
department for six years and was designated a University Professor in 1966 and
a Distinguished Professor in 1973. Harding retired in 1982 and a year later
became the first faculty member in SUNY to be awarded a SUNY Honorary Doctor of
Letters degree.

Harding's extensive research, writing and teaching earned
him international recognition and respect as an expert on Thoreau. Author of
more than 25 books and numerous articles on the life and work of Thoreau,
Harding was the founding secretary and former president of the Thoreau Society,
the oldest and largest international organization devoted to the study of any
American author. Born in Bridgewater, Mass., in 1917, Harding received his B.S.
from Bridgewater State College in 1939, M.A. from the University of North
Carolina in 1947 and a Ph.D. from Rutgers in 1950.

Harding's biography on Thoreau is considered the definitive
account of his life and was reprinted in 1992. Harding's work is still "rich
and vital" to the classroom today, said Finkelstein.

Harding's wife, Marjorie Brook Harding, created an endowment
to make the lecture series possible. In addition, Harding's family donated his
extensive collection of more than 15,000 books, pamphlets, articles and other
Thoreau memorabilia to his beloved Thoreau Society at Walden Woods in Concord,
Mass. The collection includes all Thoreau first editions and first printings.
The family generously ensured that SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library was able to
make copies of Harding's works. The Walter Harding Collection consists of
writings about Thoreau and transcendentalism.